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lvxferre@mander.xyz

Evidence of oldest known alphabetic writing unearthed in ancient Syrian city (hub.jhu.edu)

submitted 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) by lvxferre@mander.xyz to c/linguistics@mander.xyz

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Archive link: https://archive.ph/cIz4A

It's dated to be from around 2400 BCE. The article doesn't clarify if it's a true alphabet or an abjad, but either way it's interesting.

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[–] s3p5r@lemm.ee 3 points 4 hours ago

While this discovery is very cool, this bothered me:

"Alphabets revolutionized writing by making it accessible to people beyond royalty and the socially elite. Alphabetic writing changed the way people lived, how they thought, how they communicated,"

Ancient Chinese scripts seemed to manage just fine, even during their "writing is magical and only the rich are smart enough to know that magic" phase. Is it possible that the alphabet itself didn't change the way people lived, but perhaps the people who introduced it to the area changed the way the original inhabitants lived? The conclusion that the alphabet was the cause just seems really Western exceptionalist to me.